August132014

August082014

22:54

“America is using American military equipment to bomb other pieces of American military equipment halfway around the world. The reason the American military equipment got there in the first place was because, in 2003, the US had to use its military to rebuild the Iraqi army, which it just finished destroying with the American military. The American weapons the US gave the Iraqi army totally failed at making Iraq secure and have become tools of terror used by an offshoot of al-Qaeda to terrorize the Iraqis that the US supposedly liberated a decade ago. And so now the US has to use American weaponry to destroy the American weaponry it gave Iraqis to make Iraqis safer, in order to make Iraqis safer.”

November242013

A "bootstrap party" with the primary mission of reforming voting rules so that even more parties have an equal and fair chance at winning elections, ie. eliminating winner-take-all or “first past the post” voting.

February092013

January212013

02:53

“Today I say
to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are
many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this
America: They will be barely met in piecemeal fashion as we lurch from self-imposed crisis to
crisis.”

November112012

04:16

“Team Romney has every reason to be shellshocked. Its candidate, after all, resoundingly won the election of the country he was wooing.Mitt Romney is the president of [...] the white male patriarchy in its delusional death spiral.”

September062012

Do you remember this merry band of fools and criminals?"Are you better off than you were four years ago", the US news media asks, referencing the slow economic recovery and implying the Republicans should maybe get another shot at the presidency.Can you even begin to imagine what a McCain/Palin – PALIN, for God's sake! – presidency might have been like?Screw this "two sides of the same coin" meme: Fuck yes is the planet and everyone on it ever so much better off due to Obama. I'll be happily watching his nomination acceptance speech tomorrow.

July212012

09:32

“Americans across the nation confirmed today that, unfortunately, due to their extreme familiarity with the type of tragedy that occurred in a Colorado movie theater last night, they sadly know exactly how the events following the horrific shooting of 12 people will unfold. ... The nation's 300 million citizens told reporters ... "The calls not to politicize the tragedy should be starting in an hour, but by 1:30 p.m. tomorrow the issue will have been politicized".”

June272012

Whoa! First Republican I enjoy watching debate. How fucked up can the Republican voter base be that they keep putting forward Teaparty crackpots, religious extremists and empty suits like Romney instead?

If he runs in 2016, will he (need to) pull a McCain and start pandering stupidly?

December072011

The US has publicly declared it will fight discrimination against LGBT people abroad ("one of the remaining human rights challenges of our time") by using foreign aid and diplomacy to encourage reform. "Being gay is not a western invention, it is a human reality", said Hillary Clinton in Geneva.

November222011

02:38

“The U.S. political system becomes more polarized and more dysfunctional every cycle, at greater and greater human cost. The next Republican president will surely find himself or herself at least as stymied by this dysfunction as President Obama, as will the people the political system supposedly serves.”

Stewart is even a little less convinced of the practical workability of Paul's libertarian ideas than I am, but there's a lot of mutual respect – I'd really love to watch a full-hour discussion between those two.

June132011

03:31

Today I saw

- Parents tossing baseballs with their kids- A dozen couples ballroom-dancing on the pier to some guy's iPod and speakers- People wearing Puerto Rican flags as capes (there had been a parade earlier)- Passers-by dancing to a street choir's impromptu performance of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"- A non-heteronormative assortment of intimate couples in the park- A semi-pro (?) basketball game on a public playground drawing a huge crowd- And many other scenes of general merriment

It felt like I had stumbled onto a movie set where everyone was an extra in some cheesy rom-com told to act as stereotypically happy as possible.I think all of these activities might be forbidden by law and/or general grumpiness in Vienna.